Sierra Club chief says ‘reasonable’ Republicans doomed

BOTHELL — Whatever happened to Massachusetts “green” Gov. Mitt Romney, who once championed a regional climate initiative and staged a photo op in front of a coal plant to decry its dirty emissions and tout clean energy?

“Go to OpenSecrets.org and look at his contributor base, which is filled with money from executives within fossil fuel industries, and there’s a second reason: It is almost impossible for a thoughtful, reasonable person to make it through the Republican primaries,” Michael Brune, executive director of The Sierra Club, said in an interview.

Although the father of a 24-day-old baby, Brune is traveling the country from Washington to Michigan to New York to Virginia, almost always touting Democrat and pursuing an oft-frustrating agenda.

The environment often looms large as an issue in mid-summer, as record heat waves, prolonged droughts and vast forest and range land fires provide evidence of climate change. But it recedes as temperatures fall in the fall, the economy takes over and campaign issues get boiled down to 30-second TV spots.

Brune had a reminder on Sunday in suburban King County. Environmentalists were mobilized to hold signs and then do door-to-door canvassing. But warmup speeches by Sen. Patty Murray and U.S. House candidate Suzan DelBene dealt with standard Democratic themes — women’s issues and “attacks” on basic social programs.

The national green movement is testing its clout in one key race.

The League of Conservation Voters has endorsed Jay Inslee — its first gubernatorial endorsement in 42 years — and is spending an estimated $700,000 to boost the Democratic candidate for governor. Inslee is a champion of solar energy, wind farms, bio-fuels, such a passionate advocate that he coauthored a book (“Apollo’s Fire”) arguing for a massive nationwide investment in green energy.

Brune is looking, much of the time, at the “other” Washington. “The Senate ‘firewall’ has been essential for us,” he said. The Sierra Club boss is hitting Massachusetts for Elizabeth Warren and Virginia to boost the Senate campaign of ex-Gov. Tim Kaine.

The Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives has, in Brune’s count, passed more than 300 pieces of anti-environmental legislation.

The party once symbolized by such environmental leaders as Theodore Roosevelt and Dan Evans has sought to gut the Clean Air Act, come to the defense of soot from power plants and tried to relax clean water rules.

It has blocked even such bipartisan legislation as a bill by Sen. Murray and Republican Rep. Dave Reichert that would add 22,000 acres to the Alpine Lakes Wilderness in east King County, and protect the Middle Fork-Snoqualmie River under the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act.

Hence, keeping Democrats in control of the Senate is tops on the Sierra Club’s agenda. It has endorsed 21 Senate incumbents and candidates, all of them “D’s.”

Big Oil and Big Coal have countered with a saturation blitz of TV spots. “Clean coal” ads have bracketed presidential debates on cable TV. Coal plant workers have been herded to Mitt Romney rallies. The billionaire Koch brothers, whose fortune is rooted in oil, have deployed a “SuperPAC” called Americans for Prosperity.

“We don’t have a functioning government in Washington,D.C.,” Brune argued. “We have an ability, in this election, to kick people out of office that put ideology over functioning, bipartisan cooperation. It’s not clear that will take hold on Nov. 6.”

The greens praise President Obama’s clean energy initiatives, notably the Environmental Protection Agency’s pioneering effort to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. But they want more in an Obama second term — a “soot strategy” in Brune’s words, an end to mountaintop mining, and designation of more national monuments.”

Brune is effusive with praise on one front. The administration’s fuel efficiency standards for new cars — in which Detroit has agreed to increase mileage efficiency to 54 mpg — is “the most important action ever taken to reduce our dependency on fossil fuels,” he said.

President Obama has designated a handful of small monuments, recently courting the Hispanic vote by making a monument out of United Farmworkers Union founder-leader Cesar Chavez’s home and headquarters in California.

The president has yet to act on a National Monument proposed for 955 acres of federal land in Washington’s San Juan Islands, or ex-Idaho Gov. Cecil Andrus’ call for a monument in the magnificent White Cloud Mountains of Idaho.

Washington is considered a solid “blue” state in November, while no state is more solidly “red” than Idaho. The president has no immediate gain in preservation.